"First moment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swear to you by all that is sacred that I do not! Oh, Grace, the first moment I saw you my heart told me that it was impossible; and now, this afternoon, as I listened to you with that sick girl, I felt a wretch for ever having—Grace, I tell you, you made me feel, for the moment, a better man than I ever felt in my ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... way back we stayed for lunch at Merripit House, and it was there that Sir Henry made the acquaintance of Miss Stapleton. >From the first moment that he saw her he appeared to be strongly attracted by her, and I am much mistaken if the feeling was not mutual. He referred to her again and again on our walk home, and since then hardly a day has passed that we have not ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... me, Adela!" said Miss Van Tuyn, coming in with her usual graceful self-possession and looking, Lady Sellingworth thought in that first moment, quite untroubled. "This is a most unorthodox hour. But I knew you were often alone in the evening, and I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind seeing me for ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... that any of them was alive, and they had all a curious, light-headed feeling from the narrowness of the escape. They had been fighting, with their backs to the wall, and each one had shown what he was made of. A few hours before things had been so serious that now, in the first moment of relief, they sought refuge instinctively in banter. But Dr. Adamson was a solid man, and he wanted to talk the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... After the first moment's shock, he quietly accepted the new order of things, and set about shifting the carcass. Since there was no weight in the boat this was effected without any great labour. Corpang then descended. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Her plainly parted brown hair, her meek, blue eyes, her cheek just a little tinged with color, the almost sad simplicity of her dress, and that look he knew so well,—so full of cheerful patience, so sincere, that he had trusted her from the first moment as the believers of the larger half of Christendom trust the Blessed Virgin,—Mr. Bernard took this all in at a glance, and felt as pleased as if it had been his own sister Dorothea Elizabeth that he was looking at. As for Dudley Veneer, Mr. Bernard could not help being struck by the animated ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... quite natural. Sometimes she would be accompanied by a friend, either another girl or a man, and they would form a merry, happy little party of three or four. But of course he was far, far happiest when she came alone. Almost from the first moment there had been a kind of instinctive intimacy between them, and very soon she had learnt to rely on him—even to take his advice about little things—and to come to ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... the Phansegars, and knowing that, in a country where there are no inns, travellers often pass the night under a tent, or beneath the shelter of some ruins, he continued to advance towards them. After the first moment, he perceived by the complexion and the dress of one of these men, that he was an Indian, and he accosted him in the Hindoo language: "I thought to have found here a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... for want of water. And these calamities were the more terrifying, as they appeared to be without remedy, for the Gloucester had already spent a month in her endeavours to fetch the bay, and she was now no farther advanced than at the first moment she made the island; on the contrary, the people on board her had worn out all their hopes of ever succeeding in it by the many experiments they had made of its difficulty. Indeed, the same day her situation grew more desperate than ever, for after she had received ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... thing lacking; yes, it has been in my mind from the first moment we came aboard, but we cannot do it without weapons. With them in our possession we might succeed. Why, if we could have had them this afternoon it would have been an ideal time to make the attempt," ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... and with a satisfied nod Mrs. Dobson put down her bowl of gruel and went down to communicate the startling news to Hannah, who nearly lost her senses in the first moment of surprise. ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... rest of the town he found that Amuba had entered without resistance and had captured two or three buildings nearest to the gate, surprising and slaying their occupants; but beyond that he had made no progress. The Egyptians were veterans in warfare, and after the first moment of surprise had recovered their coolness, and with their flights of arrows so swept the open spaces between the buildings that the Rebu could ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... stammered at the first moment. "Yes, by fastening a big stone to both their necks and throwing them together into the river. Ah! the wretches! I'll skin them, I will, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... for the 21st century from its very first moment by solving the so-called Y2K computer problem. We had one member of Congress stand up and applaud. And we may have about that ration out there applauding at home in front of their television sets. But remember, this is ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... second conference upon the subject-matter of the last conference. He laid his business very home indeed; he protested his affection to me, and indeed I had no room to doubt it; he declared that it began from the first moment I talked with him, and long before I had mentioned leaving my effects with him. ''Tis no matter when it began,' thought I; 'if it will but hold, 'twill be well enough.' He then told me how much the offer I had made of trusting him with my effects, and leaving ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... that is the explanation, I beg herewith to send you my warm love (don't mention this to Elspeth) and to say that I wish you would come and have a game with us in the Den (don't let on to Grizel that I invited you). The first moment I saw you, I said to myself, 'This is the kind I like,' and while the people round about me were only thinking of your acting, I was wondering which would be the best way of making you my willing slave, and I beg to say that I believe I have 'found a way,' for most happily the very ones I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... admiration. "I know! Why, of course, she just is the very woman. Wait—I'll go and fetch it;" and Theophil and Isabel were thus left for a moment or two alone,—a fact of no importance beyond this, that it was the first moment in their lives that they had ever ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... Such an epochal first moment came to William Lloyd Garrison in the streets of Boston. Amid the hard struggle for bread he heard the abysmal voices, saw the gaunt forms of misery. He was a constant witness of the ravages of the demon of drink—saw how strong men succumbed, and ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... returned the old man, who after the first moment of his success seemed to think no more of the exploit; "now get the horses in readiness. Let the flames do their work for a short half hour, and then we will mount. That time is needed to cool the meadow, for these unshod Teton beasts are ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Dale, you never do. I have been jealous of your love for Tavia. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you—that day helping a poor drunken man to his feet. I said then I would make you love me, but see how I have failed. You ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... acquiescence in the attitude that had been so suddenly forced upon me was owing entirely to one circumstance. Mr. Joseph H. Parker I had recognized at his first entrance as a regular habitue of the restaurant. He was usually accompanied by a young lady who, from the first moment I had seen her, had produced an effect upon my not too susceptible disposition for which I was wholly unable to account, but which was the sole reason why I had given up my club and all other restaurants and occupied that particular place for ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... miraculous than the existence of man and the world?—any thing more literally supernatural than the origin of things? The Church explains what no one else pretends to explain, and which, every one agrees, it is of first moment should be ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... house. The two men were still bending over the papers, Cousin Jasper, with his thin, intent face, listening, Tom Brighton talking steadily, his eyes alight with that cheerful, eager kindliness that had so drawn Oliver to him from the first moment. They both turned in astonishment as the three ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... longing being fulfilled is utterly foreign to Wagner's Tristan, nor is there at any moment the smallest hope of their ever possessing each other in this life. However consumed they are with love they retain perfect mastery over themselves. This is so abundantly clear from the first moment when their love is revealed—when they drink the potion—that it is inconceivable for a misunderstanding to occur to any one who follows the text with any attention. Were the mistake confined to vulgar and careless people who make up the bulk ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... is that?" said the amazed Carlier. "In the first moment I fancied the fellow was going to speak French. Anyway, it is a different kind of gibberish to what ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... want is the most reasonable thing imaginable, the best, in every conceivable way, for yourself and—any other. You are harming, depriving, no one. You are taking nothing but your own, what has been yours, and only yours, from the first moment I saw, no—from my birth. What has happened brought me in a straight road to you, the long road I have ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... The soldiers no sooner obtain possession of it, than they think themselves at liberty to do what they please. It is enough for them that there had been an enemy on the ramparts; and, without considering that the poor inhabitants may, nevertheless, be friends and allies, they, in the first moment of excitement, all share one common fate; and nothing but the most extraordinary exertions on the part of the officers can bring them back to a sense of ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... of this to the only new element that had been introduced into his life during these last months, to the one human being alive who was his declared enemy, to the one man who had openly, in the public road, before witnesses, insulted him, to the man who, from the first moment of his coming to Polchester, had laughed at him and ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... started at the singular appearance of Sarah. From the first moment her person had been known to her until the present, she had never seen her look half so beautiful. She literally lay stretched upon a little straw, with no other pillow than a sod of earth under that rich and glowing cheek, while her raven hair had fallen down, and added to the milk-white ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... man, whom he judged to be seventy or thereabouts, coming forward nimbly, bent a little, with a long, thin arm and bony hand extended in a formal languor of welcome. A little disappointing was the first moment, but it passed away quickly, and when his visitor was seated Father Oliver noticed a large nose rising out of the pallor and on either side of it dim blue eyes and some long ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... short, and may be quickly told. M. Roussillon had taken advantage of the first moment when he and Hamilton were left alone. One herculean buffet, a swinging smash of his enormous fist on the point of the Governors jaw, and then he walked out of the fort unchallenged, doubtless on account of his ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... the something happened, that the irreparable words were spoken, which suddenly and most rudely opened the Senator's eyes to a truth which the English lawyer had seen almost from the first moment ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... just like you, the first moment I laid eyes on him, I disliked him. I think he's a danger, a big danger, and so do both of you. I can tell it by the way you act. Now, what do you think ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... The first moment of joy over, Louise's thoughts turned to the mother and sisters of her lover. She calculated that the Gazette would only leave St Petersburg by the post of that night, and that by sending off an express immediately the news ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... For the first moment Nikolai had only one sensation—the paralysing fear by which a first acquaintance with the police is always accompanied. The feeling that he had a good conscience did indeed leap up within him, but only to die ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. This is ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... a 'boy;' indeed, I overheard you say so once; but I am a man—with a heart full of all a man's emotions, passionate and strong. Into that heart I took you, from the first moment I ever saw your face. This is just three weeks ago, but it might have been three years—I know you so well. I have watched you continually; every trait of your character—every thought of your mind. From other people I have found out every portion of your history—every daily action of your ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... century: "The extraordinary violence of the king's rage with me was mainly occasioned by that absurd nostrum, the hair oil, with the notion of which Mr. Farewell had impressed him as being a specific for removing all indications of age. From the first moment of his having heard that such a preparation was attainable, he evinced a solicitude to procure it, and on every occasion never forgot to remind us of his anxiety respecting it; more especially on our departure on the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... autumn when Audrey had first seen it. She had brought Musa to the studio because she did not care to take him to his own lodgings. (As a fact, nobody that she knew, except Musa, had ever seen Musa's lodgings.) This was almost the first moment they had had to themselves since the visit of the little American doctor from the Rue Servandoni. The rumour of Musa's misfortune had spread through the Quarter like the smell of a fire, and various persons of both sexes had called to inspect, to ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... first moment, Frau von Sigmundskron had suspected that Clara was affected by the news, and her first impression had very naturally been that she knew the story and had learned it from her husband. There was nothing improbable in the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... not usually play with such little girls. But something had drawn him to her at their first moment of encounter. She wasn't like any other little girls. He felt it all the time and that was part of the thing which drew him. He was not, of course, aware that the male thrill at being regarded ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... continue, and their reliance on our supplies to become habitual. We feel every disposition to continue our efforts for administering to those wants; but that cautious attention to forms which would have been unfriendly in the first moment, becomes a duty to ourselves, when the business assumes the appearance of long continuance, and respectful also to the National Assembly itself, who have a right to prescribe the line of an interference so materially interesting to the mother country ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... me, Salome, my beloved; for I love you, and have loved you ever since the first moment when I met the beautiful spirit beaming through your sweet eyes—'Sweetest eyes were ever seen!' Dear ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... inferior to most other animals. His reason is only acquired gradually, and when in its highest perfection is often uncertain in its results. He must, therefore, have been created with instincts that for a long while supplied the want of reason, and which enabled him from the first moment of his existence to provide for his wants, to gratify his desires, and enjoy the power ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... through a mist of angry tears, Rose-Marie felt her first moment of homesickness for the friendly little town with its wide, tree-shaded streets, its lawn parties, and its neighbours; cities, she had discovered, discourage the art of neighbouring! She felt a pang of emptiness—she wanted her aunts with their soft, ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... interrupt. Of course you remember it all, and are ready to tell me that you loved me the first moment that you saw me at the window in High street. Well, perhaps I shall not object to being told it at a proper time, but now I am making my confessions. I liked you then, because you were Katie's cousin, and almost my first partner, and were never ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... After the first moment of relief, and whilst I was still stretching and rubbing my limbs, a serious problem presented ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... a disappointed aspirant, B. Gratz Brown, and the caprice of the convention, turned its choice by a sudden impulse to Horace Greeley. It was a choice that from the first moment not only defeated but almost stultified the liberal movement. It mattered not much what principles the convention set forth. Tariff reform it had already set aside, and Greeley was a zealous protectionist. For scientific civil-service ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... say. He looked into her eyes, and as her hands lay in his he stooped suddenly and kissed them. There was a great piteousness in his expression, and she felt through every nerve the humiliation and the moral weariness which oppressed him. Suddenly she recalled that first moment of intimacy between them when he had so brusquely warned her about Philip, and she had been wounded by his mere strength and fearlessness; and it hurt her to realise the contrast between ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... through his mind like a silly chant since the first moment he had seen Nate Schirmer in the library. Poor Paul. Dan did all right for himself, he did—made quite a name down in Washington, you know, a fighter, a real fighter. The Boy with the Golden Touch (joke, son, laugh ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... Tristram grew more desperate day by day. His strength, quite prostrated, no longer permitted him to be carried to the seaside daily, as had been his custom from the first moment when it was possible for the bark to be on the way homeward. He called a young damsel, and gave her in charge to keep watch in the direction of Cornwall, and to come and tell him the color of the sails of the first vessel she should ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of these belated wanderers in the paths of philosophy, enter through the portals of religion. How could it be otherwise? Religion and philosophy touch at so many points—have so many problems in common—that the first moment the good man bethinks him he will be profound, sees him plunged in all the darkest enigmas of speculative thought, there to lose himself in we know ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... continued, "we sat here as we do now, and, spite of doubts and misgivings and a broken resolution, I was happier than I shall ever be again. I had loved you from the first moment I saw you, with a passion such as I shall never feel for any other woman. But I knew that we were both poor; I knew that marriage in our circumstances could only be disastrous. It would wear out your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... a few buttons and beads. The party who had been out informed me of their having seen several neat plantations, so that it remained no longer a doubt of there being settled inhabitants on the island, for which reason I determined to get what I could, and to sail the first moment that the wind and weather would allow us to ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... third draught, as Benedict tells the story, the dead boy "opened one eye, and said, 'Why are you weeping, father? Why are you crying, lady? The blessed martyr, Thomas, has restored me to you!' At evening he sat up, ate, talked, and was restored." But the father forgot the vow which he made in the first moment of joy at his son's recovery, namely, that he would offer four silver pieces at the martyr's shrine before Mid Lent. And once more all the household was stricken with sickness, and the eldest son died. Then the parents, though sore smitten themselves, dragged themselves to Canterbury ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. "I will be brave," she said, in a low voice. "He came here in the face of all the world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment, when I saw how changed he looked, I should ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... come, and that this man to whom she had given a promise was there to claim her, how was she to go down and say what she had to say, before all the world? It was perfectly clear to her that in accordance with her reception of Urmand at the first moment of their meeting, so must be her continued conduct towards him, till he should leave her, or else take her away with him. She could not smile on him and shake hands with him, and cut his bread for him and pour out his wine, after such a letter ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... Rev. Theron Ware, from the very first moment of waking next morning, that both he and the world had changed over night. The metamorphosis, in the harsh toils of which he had been laboring blindly so long, was accomplished. He stood forth, so ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... was a person of education and refinement may appear hardly credible to my readers, but to one like myself, whose metier it is to probe the secrets of my own heart and those of others—to me it was sufficiently obvious from the first moment that, though I had to deal with a criminal, she was a very exceptional one, and belonging to my own class. I went out to the stable, and suggested to her that ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... her with cold curiosity, but was ready at the first moment to second the promptings of the evil spirit ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... she whispered, "from the first moment that I saw you, although I did not know it until that time you struck down Hooja the Sly One, and then ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... have formed one exception, at least, to the almost general indifference on the part of their maternal relations. He continued his occasional visits; and engaged, the first moment possible, to take Horatio under his ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... consummate art had this practised diplomatist wound herself into my secret! That she had read my heart better than myself was evident from that Parthian shaft, barbed with Dr. Jones, which she had shot over her shoulder in retreat. That from the first moment in which she had decoyed me to her side, she had detected "the something" on my mind, was perhaps but the ordinary quickness of female penetration. But it was with no ordinary craft that the whole conversation afterwards had been so shaped as to learn the something, and lead me to reveal ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... plaster fell upon the others of the party. As for him, he collapsed so completely that it scared me. The ordinary mestizo has no power of resistance; no matter how trifling the disease, he suffers frightfully and looks for momentary dissolution. It was plain from the first moment that Ramon believed that he had the yellow fever; instead of trying to keep at work or occupying himself with something which would distract his attention, he withdrew into the least-aired corner of a hot room and threw himself onto heap of rugs and blankets, in which he almost ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... want you to," he retorted; "I'm only telling you what every one knows. Wasn't I aware from the first moment that she married me out of pity, and didn't they all know it, and laugh and tell her she was a fool. She knew that she was a fool too, but she was very young, and thought it fine to sacrifice herself for an idea. I was ill and ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... ever have deceived himself in regard to his feelings he wondered now, for he saw quite plainly that he had been drifting into loving her from the first moment he had seen her that Good Friday morning, the foundations having been laid years before, on ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... had received her tenderly when she did this, out of kindness and pleasure in her genuine, half-childish appreciation of him. There were, of course, people who said that Lucy had been violently in love with Sir Tom, and that he had made up his mind to marry her money from the first moment he saw her; but neither of these things was true. They married with a great deal more pleasure and ease of mind than many people do who are very much in love, for they had mutual faith in each other, and felt a mutual repose and satisfaction in their union. Each supplied something ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... After the first moment of suspense she had found herself treading firm ground, and now, feeling herself perfectly secure, she had assumed a ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... the first moment I was discovered sleeping on the ground after my landing, the emperor had early notice of it by an express, and determined in council that I should be tied in the manner I have related (which was done in the night while I slept), that ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... The first moment of stupefaction had quickly passed away, and even before the Caesar had recovered consciousness Hortensius Martius had risen to his feet. There had been no hesitation in him from the first. Whilst the others pondered—vaguely ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... thought, and suddenly the sense of humiliation and anger left her, and was succeeded by a powerful curiosity such as she had never felt before about anyone. She realised that this curiosity had dawned in her almost at the first moment when she saw the stranger, and had been growing ever since. One circumstance after another had increased it till now it was definite, concrete. She wondered that she did not feel ashamed of such a feeling ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... her calm: indeed he had a vast power of subjecting those who came near him; and, among the rest, his new pupil gave himself up with an entire confidence and attachment to the good Father, and became his willing slave almost from the first moment he saw him. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... a third of the lands of Scotland, were in the possession of the Church. She keeps a chart of them to this hour: she knows every foot-breadth of British soil that at any time belonged to her: she holds its present possessors to be robbers and sacrilegious men; and the first moment she has the power, she will compel them to disgorge what she holds to be ill-gotten wealth, and endow her with the broad acres she once possessed. Nor will she stop here. By haunting death-beds,—by ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... precipitous. Nicholas Nickleby is a colourless sort of young man in the illustrations, but then he is not very vividly presented in the text. Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride may pair off with Jonas Chuzzlewit, but who can disparage the immortal Mr. Squeers? From the first moment when we see him at his inn, with the starveling little boys, through all the story, Mr. Squeers is consistently exquisite. In spite of his cruelty, coarseness, hypocrisy, there is a kind of humour in Mr. Squeers which makes him ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... nature, to fall into long silences. Bunting had always been a talker, but now he talked no more. Neither did Mrs. Bunting, but then she had always been a silent woman, and that was perhaps one reason why Bunting had felt drawn to her from the very first moment he ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... substance. {23} At length the whole face was disengaged from its covering. The complexion of the skin was dark and discoloured. The forehead and temples had lost little or nothing of their muscular substance; the cartilage of the nose was gone; but the left eye, in the first moment of exposure, was open and full, though it vanished almost immediately: and the pointed beard, so characteristic of the reign of King Charles, was perfect. The shape of the face was a long oval; many of the teeth remained; and ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... counterpart to Shakspeare's plot, namely, that of a man who had never seen a woman, that by this means these two characters of innocence and love might the more illustrate and commend each other. I confess that from the very first moment it so pleased me, that I never writ any thing with more delight." Sir Walter says it seems to have been undertaken chiefly with a view to give room for scenical decoration, and that Dryden's share in the alteration ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... sepulcher of for so many years. But crime was written too plainly on your brow. The spirit of Honora Urquhart, breaking the bounds of this room, has walked ever beside you, and I knew you from the first moment that you ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... unassailable. I think I might fairly say that among the comfortable middle classes of society the views at present held on this question are so deplorable that a large proportion of children are never sober from the first moment of their existence until they have been weaned; while often after a few years the use of alcohol is again introduced to the children as a 'medical comfort,' as a part of their regular diet, or as an invariable ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Elsa! But I had planned my home-coming to be a surprise to you. It was not a question of keeping faith, of course, because you were never tokened to me, therefore I just wanted to read in your dear eyes exactly what would come into them in the first moment of surprise . . . whether it would be joy or annoyance, love or indifference. And I was not deceived, Elsa, for when you first saw me such a look came into your eyes as I would not exchange for all the angels ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... an instant or so in the doorway—time for his eyes to produce their peculiar effect. And by the way: if he be a wearer of glasses, he should certainly remove these before coming in. He can put them on again almost immediately. It is the first moment that matters. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Lawrence's fault that Nicky had met Desmond. She had never asked them to meet each other. She did not deny that it was in her house they had met; but she had not introduced them. Desmond had introduced herself, on the grounds that she knew Dorothy. Vera suspected that, from the first moment when she had seen him there—by pure accident—she had marked him down. Very likely she had wriggled into Dorothy's Suffrage meeting on purpose. She ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... sight of it, nor throwing away a step. Nothing can stop him, nothing turn him aside; falcons and lynxes are of slow and uncertain sight compared with his. He saw his tree, trunk, boughs, foliage and all, from the first moment; not only the tree but the sky behind it; not only that tree or sky, but all the other great features of his picture: by what intense power of instantaneous selection and amalgamation cannot be explained, but by this it may be proved and ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... simple boy with a smile of pity, and then went back into his cloud of reverie. There, safely hid from trouble and wrong, he told his ideal how dear she was to him, and how she had shaped and governed his life, and made it better and nobler from the first moment they had met. The fumes of the romances which he had read mixed with the love-born delirium in his brain; he was no longer low, but a hero of lofty line, kept from his rightful place by machinations that ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... seemed to her now that she had been jealous from the first moment when she and George had come into contact with Marcella Maxwell. During the long hours of this night her jealousy burnt through her like a hot pain—jealousy, mixed with reluctant memory. Half consciously she had always assumed ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from granny, and another from Jem by the next morning's post, or I don't know what I should have done. Granny was too busy to write at first; I didn't three parts believe it before, but there was no keeping in at that first moment.' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very imprudent in her parents to encourage her, and abet her in such idolatry and silly romantic ideas) loved, with all her heart, the young officer in His Majesty's service with whom we have made a brief acquaintance. She thought about him the very first moment on waking; and his was the very last name mentioned in her prayers. She never had seen a man so beautiful or so clever: such a figure on horseback: such a dancer: such a hero in general. Talk of the Prince's bow! what was it to George's? She had seen Mr. Brummell, whom everybody praised so. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... closely to him for a space in silence. He had loved her with a fiery worship from the first moment of their meeting, but the wealth of her answering love still filled his soul with wonder. Over and over again he would tell himself that he was not her sort, but when he held her thus throbbing against his heart, he knew beyond all questioning ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... was hastening home from the brewery through the deserted streets of the Marais. He had been celebrating, in company with his two faithful borrowers, Chebe and Delobelle, his first moment of leisure, the end of that almost endless period of seclusion during which he had been superintending the manufacture of his press, with all the searchings, the joys, and the disappointments of the inventor. It had been ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which I at once recognized, changed the suspicion which had from the first moment flashed upon my ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... unfaithful; that I was easily suspicious, but that he ought to have some consideration for my weaknesses, as they came of my love for him; that I had my father's blood in my veins as well as yours; that at the first moment of such discovery I should be mad, and capable of mad deeds—of avenging myself—of dishonoring us all, him, his child, and myself; that I might even kill him first and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... all in his power to encourage and promote this good disposition, from the first moment he had been acquainted with it. He now proclaimed the noble resolution aloud, which was received with great pleasure by the whole company, who all cried out, "God bless King George and your honour;" and then added, with many ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... is a work of continuance, yet completed, like many others, as fast as it goes on. It is not, like the act of loving or hating, so complete at the first moment as not to admit the progressive form of the verb; for one may say of a lad, "I am educating him for the law;" and possibly, "He is educating for the law;" though not so well as, "He is to be educated for the law." But, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... my shortcomings in arithmetic, and the lesson-time went by so pleasantly that I was quite in good humour by the time it ended, and went out in restored spirits for the half hour's exercise which preceded our dinner, determining that, the first moment I could see my father, I would tell him I was sorry, revoke what I had said about Aleck, and ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... Hamlin had received was almost overwhelming, she had known, after the first moment, how to conceal it, and no sooner had the invalids been brought within doors and comfortably placed, than she began without a moment's delay, to bestir herself to prepare them food and drink, and make provision for their comfort. Tears of anguish filled her eyes whenever ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Pericles had vanquished, and distinguished him by her especial favour and regard, crowning him with the wreath of victory, as king of that day's happiness; and Pericles became a most passionate lover of this beauteous princess from the first moment he beheld her. ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... surprise of the first moment he could make no effort to save himself, and as a result, all three were washed hopelessly down the current, but a shrill warning from his rescuer set him fighting again with all the power of his great limbs. After that they forged steadily towards the shore. The ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... received with rapturous delight, and almost at the first moment thanked for his speedy compliance with her request. But when she found that he opposed her desire of having her marriage broken, and when she urged him with vehemence and those marks of caressing fondness she ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... mysterious than Fenella herself. He asked himself as he stood there whether her vagaries were merely temperamental, the air of mystery which seemed to surround her simply accidental. He thought of that night at her house, the curious intimacy which from the first moment she had seemed to take for granted, the confidence with which she had treated him. He remembered those few breathless moments in her room, the man's hand upon the window-sill, with the strange colored ring, worn with almost flagrant ostentation. And then, with a lightning-like transition ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Alfred, was a noble, dark-eyed, princely boy, full of vivacity and spirit; and, from the first moment of introduction, seemed to be perfectly fascinated by the spirituelle graces of his ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... your new lesson. After all, I liked you from the first moment I saw you, and asked the teraph about you, and I got an answer—such an answer! You shall know it some day. At all events, it set the poor old soft-hearted Jewess on throwing away her money. Did you ever guess from whom ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... a fleeting glimpse that Robert had of the second man, but he believed that it was Garay. He not only looked like the spy, but he was convinced that it was really he. After the first moment or two he did not doubt his identity, and making an excuse that he wanted a little fresh air and would return in an instant he walked quickly to the door. He caught another and fugitive glimpse of two men, one tall and the other short, walking away ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... commonplace; the proffer of a friendly message through the medium of a cliche which, however false in its general application, offered a short cut to the interpretation of feeling. Racquet who had maintained a well-bred silence from the first moment of his mistress's reproof, had honoured me with his approval while we sat in the farm-house sitting-room, and sealed the agreement by a friendly thrust of his nose as we ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... of it was the Presbyterian student who was relieving the minister, and he called out that they were in the hands of Providence. But he was crouched and ready to spring out of them at the first moment. ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... could say. After all these dreary months, with hope so long deferred, it was hard to understand that the splendid news could be true. Oh! what joy it would bring in his home, when he arrived to tell the story! In imagination even at that first moment, Fred could see the tired face of his mother light up with thankfulness; and his father taking her in his arms, to shelter her head ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Mrs. Stoddard's strange plea, the instinct within her which, from the first moment of the interview, had recoiled from this fanatical but intensely spiritual woman, found its way, as it were, into the light. Such was the power of her sincerity, that, in spite of the extraordinary character of the interview, Agatha's heart ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... At the first moment of the check, Marcus Decius had pushed the sturdy horse that he rode well to the fore. He saw Hostilius riding back, waving one arm and crying out incoherent words: his spear was gone, and the head of a Spaniard's lance had been thrust through his shoulder ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... sorrowful to be liable to her usual faults which would seem so much worse now; but she found herself more irritable than usual, and doubly heedless, because her mind was preoccupied. She hated herself, and suffered more from sorrow than even at the first moment, for now she felt what it was to have no one to tame her, no eye over her; she found herself going a tort et a travers all the morning, and with no one to set her right. Since it was so the first day, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... take him in hand yourself, because you said I understood him best, and managed him admirably? No, I believe that detestable young Fairlegh is at the bottom of it: I observed him watching me with that calm, steadfast glance of his, that I hated him for from the first moment I saw him; I felt certain some mischief would arise ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... borne along.—At all events, the road is plain. Let members for the Cortes be assembled from those Provinces which are not in the possession of the Invader: or at least (if circumstances render this impossible at present) let it be announced that such is the intention, to be realized the first moment when it shall become possible. In the mean while speak boldly to the People: and let the People write and speak boldly. Let the expectation be familiar to them of open and manly institutions of law ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... At the first moment she had been startled and had almost uttered a short cry, half of delight and half of fear. But she had no wish to alarm her mother and the quick thought stifled her voice. She tried to withdraw her hand, but he held it tightly in his own which were cold as ice, and she sat still listening ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... a peculiar emphasis upon the last words which did not escape the secretary, though in that first moment he did ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the same, but people did not read it so often formerly. There have always been ambition, strife, struggle, suffering—why should the historians trouble to tell of them? You yourself, Alban, would be a worker if the opportunity came to you. I have foreseen that from the first moment I met you. If you were interested, you would outdo the Germans and beat them both with your head and your hands. But it will be very difficult to interest you. You would need some great stimulus, and in your case it would be ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... from the temper of his Parliament. In the Commons, chosen as they had been in the first moment of revolutionary enthusiasm, the bulk of the members were Whigs, and their first aim was to redress the wrongs which the Whig party had suffered during the last two reigns. The attainder of Lord Russell was reversed. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... must now be assumed to be some miles per second, but we can conceive that the speed shall be so adjusted that the ball shall move along the path C D, always at the same height above the earth, though still curving, as every projectile must curve, from the horizontal line in which it moved at the first moment. Arrived at D, the ball will still be at the same height above the surface, and its velocity must be unabated. It will therefore continue in its path and move round another quadrant of the circle without getting nearer to the surface. In this ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... later she was shown into the private office of her future employer, she almost laughed in his fat round face—so absurd in that first moment did all her ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... and there were little pools on both the landings, and the whole place had a queer, dim, green, uncanny light upon it; due, I suppose, to the deep water of the channel. I saw all these things afterwards, at leisure; I did not notice them very clearly in that first moment. All that I saw then was a large sea-lugger, lying moored at the cavemouth, some few feet lower down. She was a beautiful model of a boat (I had seen that much in seeing her bow from the top of the cliff), but of course her three masts ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... shoulder, he told her where he had been, what perils he had met, how he had been saved, and how he had arrived the first moment he could; and then he went on to declare that their enemies would soon be disposed of, that they would be married, that they would take possession of Peder's house, and make him comfortable, and would never be separated again as ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... now welcomed the chance to put the law's rigor on the men that had tried to assassinate his favorite operator. Bucks, lest he might be made the victim of a more successful attack, was brought down from Point of Rocks the first moment he could be relieved. A plot to put him out of the way, as the sole witness against the accused gamblers, was uncovered by Scott almost as soon as Bucks had returned to the big town and, warned by his careful friend, he rarely went up street except with a companion—most frequently ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... by these all round and see how he will come out of the fire. He so loved his country that we may say that he lived for it entirely; that from the first moment in which he began to study as a boy in Rome the great profession of an advocate, to the last in which he gave his throat to his murderers, there was not a moment in which his heart ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope |
